


Dear Peggy

by Olivier_Mira



Category: Avengers, Captain America, MCU, Marvel MCU
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-23
Updated: 2012-11-23
Packaged: 2017-11-19 08:40:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/571344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Olivier_Mira/pseuds/Olivier_Mira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve decides to write a letter to Peggy after he finds out she's still alive, even though he's pretty sure he'll never send it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dear Peggy

Dear Peggy,

I always figured my first letter to you would be from New York to London, after the war, once Hitler and Red Skull were dead, and things had returned to normal, or at least some semblance of normal.  I had those silly ideas that all soldiers have, of settling down with the right partner and creating a nice little life out in the country somewhere, with happy children running around, and freshly baked pies in the oven.  I suppose it’s just as well, since you probably would have shot at me for even thinking about you like that.

Well, the war is over, and Hitler and Red Skull are gone, that part is true.  And they keep telling me that this is New York, despite the fact that it looks more like some kind of weird, futuristic alien planet.  But sadly, it is all I have left for a home.  So here I am, writing my first letter to you from New York in the 21st century, and things are definitely, definitely not normal.  Not even close to normal, nor will they ever be again, I’m afraid.

This feels really very awkward.  Would you believe that I still don’t know how to talk to women?  It’s even worse now, because women are really… quite different.  You would know that, I guess, because you are a woman – I mean, you’re an agent, a very intelligent and capable agent – and because you experienced all those intervening years, unlike me who… well.

I guess there’s nothing for it, so here goes.  I have a doctor - I mean, a psychologist.  I know that may seem strange, as soldiers didn’t like them in our time… ( _Our time_. I’m still getting used to saying that.  It feels odd, since for me, it’s been… one week.  One week, Peggy, since you kissed me, driving at top speed in Johann Schmidt’s stolen car, so that I could hijack that plane and then… well.  One week. And now I’m sitting here looking at your file, and… I just really don’t know what to do with this information).

But apparently things have progressed since _our time_ , when General Patton used to just slap you across the face and tell you to get back to the front lines.  Now they have a lot of doctors who are more like Dr. Erskein was, compassionate and kind, and apparently they’ve learned a lot more about how to treat soldiers who have been through… difficulties. 

So this doctor who has been helping me said that I should try writing to you, as an exercise.  It feels kind of stupid, really, and to tell you the truth, a little crazy, to be writing a letter that I am most likely never going to send. But she said it might help, and frankly, well, I don’t want to worry you or anything, Peggy, but… I’m not doing so hot.  I’m really… I’m really not at all well.  I wish… I just wish I could make myself pick up that dang phone and call you, Peggy, because… I could sure use a talking to right now, and no mistake.

Still, though, like all the dames used to say to their best guys during the War, a letter is like a piece of candy from me to you, and that’s real swell, to think that I might be sending you a piece of candy, even if I never actually put the dang thing in the mail. Say, Peggy, I never did get to find out what kind of candy you liked.  But if I had to take a guess, I’d say you’d have liked those strawberry licorice laces, bright red to match the color of that lipstick you used to wear. 

I don’t know too much about women, as you know, and even less about how they dress – although I suppose I know more than most soldiers, being that I spent some time as a “chorus girl” myself, according to Colonel Phillips – but I’ll tell you what, Peggy, dames today just don’t get ginned up like they used to.  I’ll never forget seeing you in that red dress of yours, togged to the bricks, like you just stepped off Fifth Avenue – every guy in the place went quiet as a mouse when you walked by.  Heck, you even made Bucky jealous!  Bucky, who used to get all the girls…! 

But I’m telling you, Peggy: these girls today, well, they can’t hold a candle to you.  You wouldn’t believe the kind of get-ups I’ve seen.  I’m glad my mother’s not still alive to see this.  People walk around half naked, pin-up girls just walking down the streets of New York, like it’s nothing at all.  I haven’t been outside much since my first (disastrous) day waking up, but what little I’ve seen, I’m telling you… Storming a HYDRA base was easier.  At least then, I had a plan.  Now, the only plan that comes to mind as I’m walking down the street is to go give every woman my shirt, except I’d have to go into a store and buy a hundred more shirts and just keep passing them out.  And I bet a shirt cost something ridiculous like ten dollars, too, considering how much everything is today.

Why, just yesterday, someone from SHIELD (SHIELD stands for _Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division_ , and apparently the military penchant for acronyms has not died out in the modern age), they were showing me some charts with current information about prices.  I just can’t believe it, Peggy, but a loaf of bread now cost _three dollars._   THREE DOLLARS!  That would have bought 30 loaves of bread in my old neighborhood in Brooklyn!  I just couldn’t believe my eyes: you could have knocked me over with a feather.  I really thought they were joking.

In fact, this whole business, waking up… The whole thing seems like it must be a joke, or a dream.  More like a nightmare.  It seems like any day now - any _minute_ now - I’m going to wake up back in my old army cot, and realize that I have to hurry up and get Bucky and Dum Dum out of bed before the Colonel finds out they’re hungover again, or we’ll all end up on KP.  (Bucky used to say that I was the only officer in the entire US army who willingly volunteered for KP, but really, it just didn’t seem fair that just because I happened to be Erskein’s guinea pig that I got out of doing what all the other enlisted men were required to do.  I peeled potatoes in Brooklyn; I’d be darned if I couldn’t peel potatoes in Berlin).

But the truth is Peggy, I miss you something awful.  I think you must have known that I carried a torch for you, and I still do, even… even now that you’re… that we’re… well.  These people are trying to get me to understand that this is my life now, in the future, and that I need to accept that and to move forward. _Convert retreat into advance_ , like President Roosevelt used to say.  I can get behind that.

But there’s a part of me that just… really doesn’t want to.  I just want to be back in my time, with my people.  I miss them, and the person I miss the most, well, that would be you, Peggy.  I just… I just can’t cope with the fact that we’re now separated by 70 years.  It just doesn’t make any dang sense.  Why would… Why would something like this happen?  Why would God do this to me, take everything and everyone that I have ever loved away from me?  Was I not a good enough soldier?  Could I have tried harder?  

Was it… was it Bucky?  I know that you told me that it wasn’t my fault, what happened, but… What if it was?  What if God is punishing me for letting Bucky die?  I know that’s probably not true, not really, but honestly… I don’t know what to believe anymore.  The whole world has turned topsy-turvy and I’m… I’m just barely hanging on.

Well, Peggy, I better go, as this letter is starting to get downright melancholy, and that just wouldn't be proper for a soldier's letter to this girl, now would it?  I hope that you are doing well.  ~~I love~~   ~~I care~~ I’m thinking of you.

With fond regards,

Steve Rogers

**Author's Note:**

> General George S. Patton, did, in fact, literally slap a traumatized soldier in the face. The poor guy who got slapped was later diagnosed with not only battle fatigue (now known as CSR, Combat Stress Reaction), but also malaria. The words "convert retreat into advance" come from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address in 1933, which also includes the more well known quotation, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."


End file.
